For the greater part of the past decade, I was not so much able to read at my leisure as I was assigned books to read for class in a given time frame. I managed to squeeze in a few books here and there, over the summer, during break, instead of sleeping, that were not assigned reading. Most of the assigned reading, in fact, was at the newest fifteen years old. Basically, most of the reading I've done in the last ten years was of books published in the prior four thousand years or so (Beowulf, I'm looking at you). So this was probably the hardest list for me to put together. No Twilight, although we do get some Potter for all you nerds out there with me.
10. And Another Thing... - Eoin Colfer
Despite the fact that Colfer did not start the series and had no real right to continue or even try to end it, he did an okay job. It was a difficult task, there can be no doubt about that, and the average fan boy was probably more than willing to give it the old "Star Wars Prequel" treatment, but, you know, things worked out okay. Check here for my full review.
9. Furious Improvisation - Susan Quinn
The only non-fiction book to make my list is a fascinating read, and became much more topical than the author could have imagined when she began researching the project. This book tells the story of the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal Public Works effort to put actors, writers, directors and other theatre professionals back to work. Sadly, this current economic downturn lacks a modern counterpart to this program which produced some of the most influential, controversial and best Theatre the country has ever seen. If you are at all interested in the well-being of artists in your community, send a copy of this to your Congressman and/or to the president, with a note indicating your concern and that you think we should try this again and, this time, not let it fall prey to any witch hunt. Damn you, Senator McCarthy.
8. Up In the Air - Walter Kirn
It's topical right now, especially, because of the Jason Reitman directed, partially shot in St. Louis, George Clooney starring film based on the novel, but if you haven't seen the movie yet I urge you to read the book first. Actually, I urge you to do that for any film based on a novel. Read the novel first. But no, really, because what Kirn did was paint a portrait of a man who lives in what he calls "Airworld" in our pre-9/11 days (the book having been published the very first day of 2001). It's wry, it's funny and sad at the same time. I did not imagine protagonist Ryan Bingham looking anything like George Clooney...I imagined him somewhat faceless, banal, like the hotel rooms and rental cars. In Fight Club (written by Chuck Palahniuk), the lead character drones about how everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. Ryan Bingham loves this about Airworld. You will love this book.
7. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
There is a hand full of post-9/11 literature which uses that day as a backdrop, none more emotionally in-the-moment charged as Don DeLillo's Falling Man and none more indicative of the man's exploitive nature than Neal LaBute's play The Mercy Seat. Both of these begin that morning, as the sirens ring and the dust flies. But Extremely Loud begins two years later, and does not tackle to politics or the emotional warpings of the direct victims, it follows a young boy as he comes to terms with losing his father. The narrator, nine year old Oskar Schell, carries through the novel a secret about his father. Foer's style combines prose with post-modern visual writing, which some have criticized but which I find helps capture the spirit of the characters.
6. The Salmon of Doubt - Douglas Adams (Posthumous)
The Salmon of Doubt was the working title for no fewer than three of Douglas Adams' novels, and that includes the novel in progress discovered in bits and pieces on his hard drive after his death. More than just the bare beginnings of a novel, this book gives us a collection of essays, letters and speeches Adams wrote throughout his life. It reads like a documentary culled together from home movies; it's almost an autobiography but he doesn't attempt to hide or call attention to his shortcomings which, sadly, included more procrastination than writing.
5. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
You knew I had to throw one of these in, and the only reason I didn't just include the whole series is that since some of the books were published prior to the year 2000, that would have been breaking the rules (and if I were going to break the rules, I would have put Freaks and Geeks on my Top Ten TV list). I did not feel that I should post individually, and really, adding all of the Harry Potter books published this decade into one entry would have bumped it down the list, so I chose what I feel is the strongest book of the series with Half Blood Prince. Rowling gives us the heaviest blow in the series with the death of a major character (trying...to...stay...spoiler...free...for the love of...it's Dumbledore, okay? Dumbledore. If you haven't read it by now you're not likely to). Sure, others in the series gave us loss, but not in the magnitude of this one. Also, it set up the greatest twist in the whole series, culminating in the last book with the chapter titled "The Prince's Tale." This book is pivotal in Harry's story, and is layered enough that I had to read it twice before the full effect hit me.
4. All Things, All At Once: New and Collected Stories - Lee K. Abbott
I met Lee K. Abbott, last fall at Webster University. He came and read from this book and then read from a work in progress. It's always interesting to meet a writer you admire, and I admired him primarily because of the stories in this book. He writes about growing up, fathers and sons, brothers, the desert, Roswell, love, sex, rock and roll, and he writes about them so well. I will admit that my short story "Before Rock Attained Perfection" was very heavily influenced by Abbott. My copy may be a paperback edition, but when I get a nice bookcase with glass doors to put my treasured books behind, this goes in there, right next to my battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
3. The Ministry of Special Cases - Nathan Englander
This book haunts me. The imagery, the symbolism, the humor and the sadness. All of it. Haunts me. Ever heard of the Argentinian Dirty War? Perhaps you have heard of Los Desaparecidos? Political dissidents-and often times innocent people wrongfully accused-were rounded up and systematically removed from society; locked in prison, shuffled into an impenetrable bureaucracy ostensibly for release, and then quietly pushed out of an airplane flying over the ocean in the dead of night. The Ministry of Special Cases tells the story of Kaddish Poznan, a Jewish man living with his family in Argentina, the ultimate outsider who is paid by rich Jewish families to remove evidence that their family was ever associated with a now defunct temple, a temple associated with prostitution and organized crime. He makes their past vanish. And then, his son vanishes as well. It is...powerful stuff.
2. You Don't Love Me Yet - Jonathan Lethem
Oh, Jonathan Lethem; you had me at Motherless Brooklyn back in 1999 (a novel which is soon to be released as a Edward Norton directed film next year). You're quirky, you're witty, and you write so beautifully about awkward sex. And in You Don't Love Me Yet, you write so well about art, music, and awkward sexual tension. The novel centers around a nameless indie-rock quartet which has a total of 35 minutes worth of music. Lucinda, the bass player, sets up a gig at a dance party. But there is a twist. My favorite moment in the book (and yours, too, probably) comes at the "Dance Party" where the band is supposed to play so quietly, no one can hear them. The party's guests are then supposed to dance to the music they brought in with their own walkmen. The food is not to be eaten. The party itself is to be a work of art, but the confusion of what the guests expects vs what the organizer intended breaks down, and it becomes the one moment for the unnamed band to shine. Light but smart, I read this one in all of two sittings.
1. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Foer has a way of picking the defining crises in our collective history, and making beauty out of them. While the Liev Schreiber directed film starring Elijah Wood is a pretty faithful adaptation of two thirds of the book, it is that last third that brings the most beauty and sadness to the novel. Everything is Illuminated is funny and sombre, often times in the same sentence. As a writer, I would have been terrified to have turned out such a novel for my first offering. I'd be afraid I could never have followed it up. Fortunately for readers, Foer seems not to notice the quality of his words after he's polished them. Time to move on to the next project.
Honorable Mention:
A Moveable Feast: Restored Edition - Ernest Hemingway (posthumous), Sean Hemingway (introduction) and Patrick Hemingway (foreword)
What this little list of Hemingways after the title does not tell you is that Sean and Patrick, Ernest Hemingway's grandsons, heavily edited this book to make their grandmother, Ernest's first wife, look better. Some critics argued that Mary Hemingway, Ernest's fourth wife who edited the original manuscript before its first publication in 1964, removed large chunks at her discretion which have been reinstated for this edition. I include this as an honorable mention only to concede to the fact that long after the artist is gone, their name can be invoked and new insights attributed to them.
Keep checking back. To be honest, this list was hard in that I had to really think about ten new books I've read in the last ten years. I expected my Top Ten films and Albums lists to be easier, but in fact they were harder to narrow down to only ten of each. In fact, it got so hard that my top ten films and albums lists will now be top fifteen lists, each with honorable mentions as well. Look for those as the week progresses to Christmas. And as usual, let me know what you think. Ready any new, good books lately and want to share? Read something on my list and you completely disagree that it should be anywhere near the top ten? Let me know!
Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts
Monday, December 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Book Review: And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer
As stated previously, Eoin Colfer reluctantly accepted the task of writing a sixth book in Douglas Adams' science-fiction/comedy magnum opus The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Adams himself died in 2001, nine years after the publication of the fifth book in the series. Bridging the gap was probably more than enough of a challenge for Colfer, but he had an even bigger obstacle to keep in mind, an obstacle which in this case is presented to you in the form of me, the Hitchhiker fan. And the worst part is, unlike writer's block or editors or computers crashing and erasing all that masterful writing you had just forgotten to save after sixty pages leaving only the first three pages you intended to throw out anyway, the fan comes in at the end of the process. The fan determines your level of success, to a point.
I say "to a point" because Colfer had a fair amount of built-in success with this writing venture. Millions of readers the world over know and love the Hitchhiker series, and millions of readers the world over know and love Colfer's own Artemis Fowl series (and there is bound to be some overlap). When you've got an artist that sells, selling a product that sells, chances are, you're not going to lose money. I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd feel safe betting that Colfer and his publisher are sitting pretty on this one.
But the measure of success for a writer doesn't come in the sales, it comes in the critical response and (sometimes more importantly) the respose of the amateur critic (read: the general public, i.e. you and me). So Colfer's built in sales can be discounted for the rest of this review. Sufficed to say, Colfer had multiple barriers to overcome when writing this book.
When we last left the heroes of the Hitchhiker series, Douglas Adams had managed to kill four of the original main characters (one of them twice) as well as two new characters. For the record, Marvin The Paranoid Android turned himself off for the last time at the end of book four (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish) while Arthur, Ford, Trillian and a Trillian from a different dimension were all killed off. At the beginning of the fifth book (Mostly Harmless), we find Arthur's lady love from book four has vanished in a hyperspace accident. Also, Random (Trillian's daughter by Arthur's sperm-bank deposit) was killed. Zaphod, the two-headed insane Galactic President, hadn't been seen since the end of book three (Life, The Universe and Everything).
Eoin Colfer's first barrier, therefore, was how to reunite four dead people with an absent character (just four; Marvin's story had ended positively enough and only four were present where the last book left off, as the Earth was destroyed yet again). And inexplicably, the book opens with an old man who you slowly suspect to be Arthur sitting on a beach reminiscing until a bird arrives and warns of a low battery. Two more scenarios play out, one with Ford Prefect living the high life until an octopus warns of a dying battery and the last with Trillian interviewing her own daughter while a small furry animal delivers the warning. And suddenly, the four find themselves in the midst of the Earth being destroyed, at the end of the last book.
Before the Earth is destroyed, however, Zaphod returns, and together the five disembark only to find themselves in need of rescue yet again. This is what Colfer has done; he has taken the structure of the original story and tweaked it. Originally, Ford and Arthur are rescued from the Earth by the very people working to destroy it, only to find themselves in need of rescue again moments later by Zaphod. In this case, Zaphod's rescue is the first and then a character by the name of Wowbagger arrives and saves them (Wowbagger being an immortal being who made brief appearances in book three).
This far in, it is clear that this is not and will not become a Douglas Adams novel. It is Colfer, through and through, which is comforting. Had anyone attempted to write the sixth book that Adams may have written, reader backlash would have been immediate. We as fans know that Adams was incomparable, and also that that was not always a good thing.
Adams had a quick and witty pen, but he was never a novelist. In fact, the first book in the series could be seen as nothing more than a series of events happening to the main characters while they absorb them. They were passive, especially Arthur who never grew out of that role as the series went on (except for briefly in the third book). Colfer, on the other hand, has a firm grip on what drives a novel (plot) and how plot should be driven (by the characters, rather than at the characters).
Read as a book by itself, And Another Thing... would bring a mild chuckle at times. It's the references which are its strength and weakness. Making jokes about Arthur's desire for a good cup of tea help keep the story grounded in its legacy. However, whenever Colfer goes onto one of his many Adams-esque tangents (Adams once said that when he was having trouble with the plot he was working on, he would invent a small sub plot and put it into the context of the story he was writing just to help it along; for instance the sub plot in book three about the Starship Titanic), Colfer delves into names of places and people which Adams had used before. This seems to be overkill; with each reference to Port Brasta, the Land of Brequinda, the Squornshellos system, Zarniwoop, Van Harl (oh, did you know Zarniwoop and Van Harl are the same person? according to Colfer, they are), and so forth, I would cringe. It was as if Colfer was at my elbow, nudging me in the side to say, "See, I know the first five books just as well as any of the hardcore fans. How else would I know about planets like Hastromil and Han Wavel?" We get it, Colfer, and we wish you'd come up with your own names.
These side-tracks don't always end this way. A particular story about an Atheist smuggling himself into Valhalla in the belly of a goat contains my favorite line in the whole book; while trying to cut himself from the goat's belly as it is being roasted above a fire, he reaches for his knife to find it is not there. "Where's my nothingdamned kife?" he asks. And one of these mini-plots concerns the man who invented the sub-etha network (the galactic equivalent, in this book anyway, of the internet) who went by the name of Doxy Ribonu-Clegg. Legend has it that as he lay on his back in a field on his home planet and gazed at the stars, he imagined all the space to be loaded with information and promptly discovered ways to transmit information through that space. Readers will smile and acknowledge this as a tip of the hat to Douglas Adams himself, concerning the story of how he came up with the idea for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria. The name Doxy Ribonu-Clegg is a hat tip to Adams' initials DNA, while the suggestion that he may have invented the internet being attributed to the fact that the way Adams visioned the fictional Guide, the internet (and specifically Wikipedia) have fulfilled that vision and with smart phones and the Amazon Kindle, the Guide is all but a reality now.
The main difference between this part of the series and the previous five parts (aside from the name on the cover) is that each character (including Arthur) has a clear motivation now. Zaphod wishes only to make money from a small band of humans he sold a planet to; Trillian wishes to give more attention to her daughter. Ford wants to dismantle the power structure at the Guide's offices which had suffered a takeover by the beuracratic Vogons. Random wishes to make a change in the galaxy, to grow up and become a leader. Wowbagger wishes to regain mortality. Thor (who plays a major role) wishes to regain his popularity which suffered a blow in recent times due to a compromising video posted on a galactic youtube site. And Arthur wishes to find Fenchurch again, and to live a peaceful life once and for all, to escape his bad luck and constant imminent doom.
We have to remember, though, that this is Arthur Dent we are talking about here. The only book in which he got what he wanted was the fourth one, and by the beginning of the fifth it had been taken away from him. So the question the reader has in mind now should be, will Colfer let Arthur Dent be happy? Well, you'll have to read to find out.
But the overall question is, will Colfer make the fans happy? My answer to that is the same as above; you'll have to read to find out. This is certainly not what Adams would have written, but if you come in expecting that you were never going to be happy. You have to approach the book without any expectations other than there will be characters with whom you are familiar. In the end, the book reads less like the sixth in the series and more like homage to the series, and to its creator who we all still, eight years later, miss. Which is not to say it's not worth the read. I will be stashing this on my bookshelf, to the right of the first five books in the series. I knew as I read it that it was not Douglas Adams' part six, but it still felt like it fit. As for Eoin Colfer, he has earned himself an appreciative nod from me. I know I could never, in a million years, have attempted to take on such a monumental task. I only hope that he knows how much I respect him. As far as I am concerned, he overcame the greatest barrier; me.
===
I know some readers may have been expecting part two of my Sunny Day Real Estate review, but I had to get to this before too long. Sunny Day Real Estate's newest album has been out nearly ten years, an extra day won't make much difference. Colfer's book has been out for eight days, I figured I should get this out while it's still a new book. But come back tomorrow for more Sunny Day rants, and the following day for more. That's right, I'm promising to blog for the next two days, which would make my consecutive day blogging total 4 days (five if you don't count weekends, but, I mean, seriously, you can count weekends). I look forward to bringing you some consistency which is not just consistently not blogging!
I say "to a point" because Colfer had a fair amount of built-in success with this writing venture. Millions of readers the world over know and love the Hitchhiker series, and millions of readers the world over know and love Colfer's own Artemis Fowl series (and there is bound to be some overlap). When you've got an artist that sells, selling a product that sells, chances are, you're not going to lose money. I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd feel safe betting that Colfer and his publisher are sitting pretty on this one.
But the measure of success for a writer doesn't come in the sales, it comes in the critical response and (sometimes more importantly) the respose of the amateur critic (read: the general public, i.e. you and me). So Colfer's built in sales can be discounted for the rest of this review. Sufficed to say, Colfer had multiple barriers to overcome when writing this book.
When we last left the heroes of the Hitchhiker series, Douglas Adams had managed to kill four of the original main characters (one of them twice) as well as two new characters. For the record, Marvin The Paranoid Android turned himself off for the last time at the end of book four (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish) while Arthur, Ford, Trillian and a Trillian from a different dimension were all killed off. At the beginning of the fifth book (Mostly Harmless), we find Arthur's lady love from book four has vanished in a hyperspace accident. Also, Random (Trillian's daughter by Arthur's sperm-bank deposit) was killed. Zaphod, the two-headed insane Galactic President, hadn't been seen since the end of book three (Life, The Universe and Everything).
Eoin Colfer's first barrier, therefore, was how to reunite four dead people with an absent character (just four; Marvin's story had ended positively enough and only four were present where the last book left off, as the Earth was destroyed yet again). And inexplicably, the book opens with an old man who you slowly suspect to be Arthur sitting on a beach reminiscing until a bird arrives and warns of a low battery. Two more scenarios play out, one with Ford Prefect living the high life until an octopus warns of a dying battery and the last with Trillian interviewing her own daughter while a small furry animal delivers the warning. And suddenly, the four find themselves in the midst of the Earth being destroyed, at the end of the last book.
Before the Earth is destroyed, however, Zaphod returns, and together the five disembark only to find themselves in need of rescue yet again. This is what Colfer has done; he has taken the structure of the original story and tweaked it. Originally, Ford and Arthur are rescued from the Earth by the very people working to destroy it, only to find themselves in need of rescue again moments later by Zaphod. In this case, Zaphod's rescue is the first and then a character by the name of Wowbagger arrives and saves them (Wowbagger being an immortal being who made brief appearances in book three).
This far in, it is clear that this is not and will not become a Douglas Adams novel. It is Colfer, through and through, which is comforting. Had anyone attempted to write the sixth book that Adams may have written, reader backlash would have been immediate. We as fans know that Adams was incomparable, and also that that was not always a good thing.
Adams had a quick and witty pen, but he was never a novelist. In fact, the first book in the series could be seen as nothing more than a series of events happening to the main characters while they absorb them. They were passive, especially Arthur who never grew out of that role as the series went on (except for briefly in the third book). Colfer, on the other hand, has a firm grip on what drives a novel (plot) and how plot should be driven (by the characters, rather than at the characters).
Read as a book by itself, And Another Thing... would bring a mild chuckle at times. It's the references which are its strength and weakness. Making jokes about Arthur's desire for a good cup of tea help keep the story grounded in its legacy. However, whenever Colfer goes onto one of his many Adams-esque tangents (Adams once said that when he was having trouble with the plot he was working on, he would invent a small sub plot and put it into the context of the story he was writing just to help it along; for instance the sub plot in book three about the Starship Titanic), Colfer delves into names of places and people which Adams had used before. This seems to be overkill; with each reference to Port Brasta, the Land of Brequinda, the Squornshellos system, Zarniwoop, Van Harl (oh, did you know Zarniwoop and Van Harl are the same person? according to Colfer, they are), and so forth, I would cringe. It was as if Colfer was at my elbow, nudging me in the side to say, "See, I know the first five books just as well as any of the hardcore fans. How else would I know about planets like Hastromil and Han Wavel?" We get it, Colfer, and we wish you'd come up with your own names.
These side-tracks don't always end this way. A particular story about an Atheist smuggling himself into Valhalla in the belly of a goat contains my favorite line in the whole book; while trying to cut himself from the goat's belly as it is being roasted above a fire, he reaches for his knife to find it is not there. "Where's my nothingdamned kife?" he asks. And one of these mini-plots concerns the man who invented the sub-etha network (the galactic equivalent, in this book anyway, of the internet) who went by the name of Doxy Ribonu-Clegg. Legend has it that as he lay on his back in a field on his home planet and gazed at the stars, he imagined all the space to be loaded with information and promptly discovered ways to transmit information through that space. Readers will smile and acknowledge this as a tip of the hat to Douglas Adams himself, concerning the story of how he came up with the idea for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria. The name Doxy Ribonu-Clegg is a hat tip to Adams' initials DNA, while the suggestion that he may have invented the internet being attributed to the fact that the way Adams visioned the fictional Guide, the internet (and specifically Wikipedia) have fulfilled that vision and with smart phones and the Amazon Kindle, the Guide is all but a reality now.
The main difference between this part of the series and the previous five parts (aside from the name on the cover) is that each character (including Arthur) has a clear motivation now. Zaphod wishes only to make money from a small band of humans he sold a planet to; Trillian wishes to give more attention to her daughter. Ford wants to dismantle the power structure at the Guide's offices which had suffered a takeover by the beuracratic Vogons. Random wishes to make a change in the galaxy, to grow up and become a leader. Wowbagger wishes to regain mortality. Thor (who plays a major role) wishes to regain his popularity which suffered a blow in recent times due to a compromising video posted on a galactic youtube site. And Arthur wishes to find Fenchurch again, and to live a peaceful life once and for all, to escape his bad luck and constant imminent doom.
We have to remember, though, that this is Arthur Dent we are talking about here. The only book in which he got what he wanted was the fourth one, and by the beginning of the fifth it had been taken away from him. So the question the reader has in mind now should be, will Colfer let Arthur Dent be happy? Well, you'll have to read to find out.
But the overall question is, will Colfer make the fans happy? My answer to that is the same as above; you'll have to read to find out. This is certainly not what Adams would have written, but if you come in expecting that you were never going to be happy. You have to approach the book without any expectations other than there will be characters with whom you are familiar. In the end, the book reads less like the sixth in the series and more like homage to the series, and to its creator who we all still, eight years later, miss. Which is not to say it's not worth the read. I will be stashing this on my bookshelf, to the right of the first five books in the series. I knew as I read it that it was not Douglas Adams' part six, but it still felt like it fit. As for Eoin Colfer, he has earned himself an appreciative nod from me. I know I could never, in a million years, have attempted to take on such a monumental task. I only hope that he knows how much I respect him. As far as I am concerned, he overcame the greatest barrier; me.
===
I know some readers may have been expecting part two of my Sunny Day Real Estate review, but I had to get to this before too long. Sunny Day Real Estate's newest album has been out nearly ten years, an extra day won't make much difference. Colfer's book has been out for eight days, I figured I should get this out while it's still a new book. But come back tomorrow for more Sunny Day rants, and the following day for more. That's right, I'm promising to blog for the next two days, which would make my consecutive day blogging total 4 days (five if you don't count weekends, but, I mean, seriously, you can count weekends). I look forward to bringing you some consistency which is not just consistently not blogging!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Book Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
"Far out, in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, lies a small, unregarded yellow sun," Dougals Adams' first novel opens. "Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea," it goes on, while it dawns on the reader that hey, he's talking about the Earth, and he's also talking about us.
It might also dawn on some of the more particular kinds of readers who have backgrounds in astronomy that Adams' calculations of distance are a bit off. But this is not really that big of a deal.
The tone suggests a disdain for the Earth and its inhabitants, to be sure. And it is possible that Douglas Adams himself harbored some disdain at the time it was written, a year or so prior to the publication of the book. But you have to remember that, at the time, he was a struggling writer/performer trying very hard to become the next John Cleese, but he wasn't very good at being John Cleese. So when this opening was written, for a radio series tentatively titled "The Ends of the Earth" he was feeling a little down-trodden. But the radio series, and subsequently the book, were set to change and define his life and career forever.
The book opens with an outsider's introduction to Earth, where we find Arthur Dent, a human who is unaware that his home is about to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. This action, taken by the English government, is mirrored by the fact that the galactic government, unbeknownst to the people of Earth, have made a similar decision about Earth. Enter Ford Prefect (a name which American readers may not get, because the Ford Prefect is a car that was never sold in the United States, but imagine that the name is Ford Focus and you'll get the joke made part way through the first couple chapters), an alien researcher for a guide book for interstellar travelers titled, interestingly enough, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He saves Arthur from the destruction of Earth and together, they go on an adventure across the stars.
Basically, this book is a buddy comedy about two galactic travellers, one of whom is very much in his element in space and the other who is not. Together they meet a slew of sci-fi heroes and villans while travelling to strange new worlds in very fast spaceships with technology Arther Dent has never dreamed of.
It sounds pretty cut and dried, but Douglas Adams does several things with this book which turn the whole genre on its head. To begin with, the novel opens where so many science fiction stories end (or at least threaten to end), with the destruction of the Earth. The first villains Arthur and Ford meet are not fierce evil warriors (like Star Trek's Klingons) or heavy-handed fascists (like the Empire in Star Wars) but a race of beauracrats; a branch of the galactic democratic government that takes care of making sure all the permits are in place before beginning construction of a new bypass.
This is why Douglas Adams' work is so groundbreaking. Like so much art he's holding a mirror up to reality, but in this case the mirror is a fun-house mirror with stars and spaceships in it.
The problem with the novel, though, is that while it's hilarious and thought-provoking on subjects such as God and the human condition, our main character is a person who actually does very little in the course of the story. Things happen to him or, more frequently, to the characters around him while he observes, the quintessential fish-out-of-water. The action is driven mainly by Zaphod Beeblebrox, a character identified as the former president of the galaxy who spends the novel searching for a mystical planet without any motive. His motivation, or lack thereof, is explored but never explained.
Another problem with the novel has to do with that introductory line, calling Earth utterly insignificant. It is revealed that the Earth is, in fact, a very significant planet in its own right, so significant that it is being reconstructed (that is right, reconstructed) by a race of people who originally built it as a computer with the job of calculating the missing piece to the meaning of life (having already learned the answer from a previous computer, they must build a second to calculate the question). So the Earth is very significant, but the question, or the answer depending on which way you look at it, is not resolved when you turn the back cover.
The saving grace of this, though, is that the book is based on a radio series, and the book itself only covers a part of the series. And the last line of the book indicates that there will be a second (and luckily, there is) which may resolve these issues (unluckily, it won't).
The book is full of pieces of wisdom that are both funny and accurate. "Time is an illusion," Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent over three pints of beer apiece at noon, "lunchtime doubly so." A passage about the psychological advantage of owning a towel shows the genius of the writer at work. It is truly a sad fact that this writer was not more prolific in his too-short life. Reading this will show you just how much the world may have been robbed of.
You can find this book at any major bookseller or online. For the actual Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, please contact Megadodo Publications of Ursa Minor Beta in person by hitching a lift on the next passing spaceship. Don't forget your towel.
It might also dawn on some of the more particular kinds of readers who have backgrounds in astronomy that Adams' calculations of distance are a bit off. But this is not really that big of a deal.
The tone suggests a disdain for the Earth and its inhabitants, to be sure. And it is possible that Douglas Adams himself harbored some disdain at the time it was written, a year or so prior to the publication of the book. But you have to remember that, at the time, he was a struggling writer/performer trying very hard to become the next John Cleese, but he wasn't very good at being John Cleese. So when this opening was written, for a radio series tentatively titled "The Ends of the Earth" he was feeling a little down-trodden. But the radio series, and subsequently the book, were set to change and define his life and career forever.
The book opens with an outsider's introduction to Earth, where we find Arthur Dent, a human who is unaware that his home is about to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. This action, taken by the English government, is mirrored by the fact that the galactic government, unbeknownst to the people of Earth, have made a similar decision about Earth. Enter Ford Prefect (a name which American readers may not get, because the Ford Prefect is a car that was never sold in the United States, but imagine that the name is Ford Focus and you'll get the joke made part way through the first couple chapters), an alien researcher for a guide book for interstellar travelers titled, interestingly enough, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He saves Arthur from the destruction of Earth and together, they go on an adventure across the stars.
Basically, this book is a buddy comedy about two galactic travellers, one of whom is very much in his element in space and the other who is not. Together they meet a slew of sci-fi heroes and villans while travelling to strange new worlds in very fast spaceships with technology Arther Dent has never dreamed of.
It sounds pretty cut and dried, but Douglas Adams does several things with this book which turn the whole genre on its head. To begin with, the novel opens where so many science fiction stories end (or at least threaten to end), with the destruction of the Earth. The first villains Arthur and Ford meet are not fierce evil warriors (like Star Trek's Klingons) or heavy-handed fascists (like the Empire in Star Wars) but a race of beauracrats; a branch of the galactic democratic government that takes care of making sure all the permits are in place before beginning construction of a new bypass.
This is why Douglas Adams' work is so groundbreaking. Like so much art he's holding a mirror up to reality, but in this case the mirror is a fun-house mirror with stars and spaceships in it.
The problem with the novel, though, is that while it's hilarious and thought-provoking on subjects such as God and the human condition, our main character is a person who actually does very little in the course of the story. Things happen to him or, more frequently, to the characters around him while he observes, the quintessential fish-out-of-water. The action is driven mainly by Zaphod Beeblebrox, a character identified as the former president of the galaxy who spends the novel searching for a mystical planet without any motive. His motivation, or lack thereof, is explored but never explained.
Another problem with the novel has to do with that introductory line, calling Earth utterly insignificant. It is revealed that the Earth is, in fact, a very significant planet in its own right, so significant that it is being reconstructed (that is right, reconstructed) by a race of people who originally built it as a computer with the job of calculating the missing piece to the meaning of life (having already learned the answer from a previous computer, they must build a second to calculate the question). So the Earth is very significant, but the question, or the answer depending on which way you look at it, is not resolved when you turn the back cover.
The saving grace of this, though, is that the book is based on a radio series, and the book itself only covers a part of the series. And the last line of the book indicates that there will be a second (and luckily, there is) which may resolve these issues (unluckily, it won't).
The book is full of pieces of wisdom that are both funny and accurate. "Time is an illusion," Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent over three pints of beer apiece at noon, "lunchtime doubly so." A passage about the psychological advantage of owning a towel shows the genius of the writer at work. It is truly a sad fact that this writer was not more prolific in his too-short life. Reading this will show you just how much the world may have been robbed of.
You can find this book at any major bookseller or online. For the actual Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, please contact Megadodo Publications of Ursa Minor Beta in person by hitching a lift on the next passing spaceship. Don't forget your towel.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Book Review: The Ministry of Special Cases
The problem many would-be writers encounter is in telling the tale about the right person in the right circumstances: it's easy enough to come by if the situation is ordinary. It is easy to come by if the character is ordinary. But when you start introducing the extraordinary, it is very easy to fall into cliche. Think Superman fighting supervillians; it may be exciting, but what is more wondrous is Joe Shmo taking on a large corporation and winning. Think The Rain Maker; that's a better movie than any Superman flick.
Not everybody knows the details of Argentina's Dirty War, but the tales of The Desaparecidos, the thousands of citizens who were neither officially missing or dead, haunt the country still. And it is into the midst of this extraordinary national nightmare that Nathan Englander drops Kaddish Poznan, his extraordinary character.
Kaddish Poznan makes his money by erasing the past; the only Jewish man in all of Buenos Aires to admit to being the son of a whore and pimp, he is an outcast, but a useful one. The other remaining Jews in the community pay him to remove their parents' names from the gravestones and records, so no trace of their disreputable past remains. But one day, Kaddish's son Pato is taken from their home, and Kaddish discovers that he is not the only one in the business of erasing a person's existence.
The story takes us from the silent graveyard to halls of power, and everywhere in between, and eventually to the halls of the Ministry of Special Cases, a bureaucratic monstrosity. Kaddish's hopelessness clashes with his wife's determination to bring their son home alive.
But this is more than just a story of one family's struggle to reunite (or not); it is a story about oppression, the frustration felt by those who are oppressed, and the desperation that comes along.
If you know about the Dirty War, or if you don't, this book is for you. It opens your eyes with the same immediate intensity as a U2 song, but it holds onto you the way Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings can. It is both terrible and beautiful, and exactly as it should be. And it speaks to the permanence of the past; the names are gone but the headstones remain. Pato may never walk into their home again, but Lillian and Kaddish remember him. There is a moment when Kaddish removes a name woven in gold thread from a velvet curtain, and when he steps away the name is yet more legible, as time has tarnished the curtain except where the gold thread covered it. This image stands out foremost in my mind, and that is the mark of a good story, and a good writer. No superheroes and no cliches.
Nathan Englander spoke on Fresh Air on NPR May 7th, 2007, which is where I first heard of it.
Not everybody knows the details of Argentina's Dirty War, but the tales of The Desaparecidos, the thousands of citizens who were neither officially missing or dead, haunt the country still. And it is into the midst of this extraordinary national nightmare that Nathan Englander drops Kaddish Poznan, his extraordinary character.
Kaddish Poznan makes his money by erasing the past; the only Jewish man in all of Buenos Aires to admit to being the son of a whore and pimp, he is an outcast, but a useful one. The other remaining Jews in the community pay him to remove their parents' names from the gravestones and records, so no trace of their disreputable past remains. But one day, Kaddish's son Pato is taken from their home, and Kaddish discovers that he is not the only one in the business of erasing a person's existence.
The story takes us from the silent graveyard to halls of power, and everywhere in between, and eventually to the halls of the Ministry of Special Cases, a bureaucratic monstrosity. Kaddish's hopelessness clashes with his wife's determination to bring their son home alive.
But this is more than just a story of one family's struggle to reunite (or not); it is a story about oppression, the frustration felt by those who are oppressed, and the desperation that comes along.
If you know about the Dirty War, or if you don't, this book is for you. It opens your eyes with the same immediate intensity as a U2 song, but it holds onto you the way Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings can. It is both terrible and beautiful, and exactly as it should be. And it speaks to the permanence of the past; the names are gone but the headstones remain. Pato may never walk into their home again, but Lillian and Kaddish remember him. There is a moment when Kaddish removes a name woven in gold thread from a velvet curtain, and when he steps away the name is yet more legible, as time has tarnished the curtain except where the gold thread covered it. This image stands out foremost in my mind, and that is the mark of a good story, and a good writer. No superheroes and no cliches.
Nathan Englander spoke on Fresh Air on NPR May 7th, 2007, which is where I first heard of it.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
An Update on Some Things and a Preview of a Couple New Features!
Well, Friday I e-mailed the president of Master File St. Louis, which as far as I can tell is a legal document service based in Clayton. They need a person to do a bit of research and deliver court documents, and yesterday he e-mailed me back and today I sent him my resume. Check it out! I said I would look for a new job and I'm on it! Go me! Granted, I still have not gotten a new job, nor have I rode my bicycle once since that last [20] time[s] I said I would, but it's only been a [few dozen] week[s] so I don't feel too bad.
I feel just a little uneasy about having sent him an e-mail telling him how detail oriented I can be, then thirty seconds later having to send him another one because I forgot to attach my resume like I said I was going to. Oops. And yes, I am aware of how ironic that was, please stop pointing it out.
Alright, so, from now on I will announce on my blog when I start reading a new book I haven't read before, and the first weekend after I finish it, I will post a review. This is just a way of keeping myself reading as well as flexing my undeveloped and rusty journalism skills. Or, Skeelz, as some people call them. I still call them skills, though.
Another feature I would like to add, though I am not sure how this will work, is something I would like to call Free Write Fridays. I think what I'll do is at some time during the week, I will call for suggestions, and readers can post suggestions as comments on that post. Then, on Friday, I will select one of those suggestions and do a half hour to hour long freewrite right into the blog. We'll see how that works out. So, I'll go ahead and call for the first suggestions for Free Write Fridays!
Some guidelines:
Your suggestions should consist of three parts; type of writing, one character, and a situation. For instance:
Short story, Bob Jones, Lost his wedding ring.
...or...
Play, a UPS delivery man, a suburban hostage situation
...or...
Film script, BBQ master Bobby Slay, getting his ass handed to him by Iron Chef Japanese Masaharu Morimoto
Something along those lines. Okay. suggestion box is opened. And...GO!
I feel just a little uneasy about having sent him an e-mail telling him how detail oriented I can be, then thirty seconds later having to send him another one because I forgot to attach my resume like I said I was going to. Oops. And yes, I am aware of how ironic that was, please stop pointing it out.
Alright, so, from now on I will announce on my blog when I start reading a new book I haven't read before, and the first weekend after I finish it, I will post a review. This is just a way of keeping myself reading as well as flexing my undeveloped and rusty journalism skills. Or, Skeelz, as some people call them. I still call them skills, though.
Another feature I would like to add, though I am not sure how this will work, is something I would like to call Free Write Fridays. I think what I'll do is at some time during the week, I will call for suggestions, and readers can post suggestions as comments on that post. Then, on Friday, I will select one of those suggestions and do a half hour to hour long freewrite right into the blog. We'll see how that works out. So, I'll go ahead and call for the first suggestions for Free Write Fridays!
Some guidelines:
Your suggestions should consist of three parts; type of writing, one character, and a situation. For instance:
Short story, Bob Jones, Lost his wedding ring.
...or...
Play, a UPS delivery man, a suburban hostage situation
...or...
Film script, BBQ master Bobby Slay, getting his ass handed to him by Iron Chef Japanese Masaharu Morimoto
Something along those lines. Okay. suggestion box is opened. And...GO!
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